The Anchors Aweigh series was placed in honor of the men of the
US Navy who have served in the defense of our country. Each cache
is dedicated to one of the warships involved in battle. If you find
all the caches in the series, you’ll reveal some nice GeoArt
on your cache map. These are not difficult caches to find. If you
cannot find a cache easily, it’s probably missing. Send me a
picture (by email, not in your log) of where you think the cache
should be, and I’ll accept the find and replace the
cache.
Because of the difficulty in finding suitable locations for some
of the caches, some puzzle caches were used (not this one) so that
the find icon could be in a location separate from the cache. You
should be able to solve the puzzles with information on this cache
page. I suggest you solve the puzzles before you make your cache
run, to help optimize the route.
USS Maddox
USS Maddox, an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer was named
for Captain William A. T. Maddox, USMC. She was laid down by the
Bath Iron Works Corporation at Bath in Maine on 28 October 1943,
launched on 19 March 1944, commissioned on 2 June 1944.
During World War II, Maddox screened the ships of the
Fast Carrier Task Force during strikes against enemy targets in the
western Pacific. She was struck by an enemy Japanese kamikaze
aircraft off Formosa on 21 January 1945. During the Korean War, the
Maddox participated in the Blockade of Wonsan, a 861 day
siege bombardment of the city.
She was best known for her role in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
During a patrol in international waters off the coast of Vietnam,
she was attacked by three torpedo boats belonging to the North
Vietnam Navy. A sea battle resulted, in which the Maddox
expended over 280 3" and 5" shells, and which involved the strafing
from four USN F-8 Crusader jet fighter bombers. One US aircraft was
damaged, one 14.5mm round hit the destroyer, three North Vietnamese
torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were
killed and six were wounded; there were no U.S. casualties. The
incident was a major factor in American involvement in the Vietnam
War.
Maddox was decommissioned in 1969 and assigned to the
Naval Reserve Force. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel
Register on 2 July 1972. On 6 July 1972 she was transferred to
Taiwan and renamed Po Yang. The ship was scrapped in 1985.
Gulf of Tonkin Incident
USS Maddox
On 31 July 1964, Maddox commenced her first leg of a
patrol in the Tonkin Gulf that would later develop into a naval
action with global repercussions. On 2 August 1964, Maddox,
cruising in international waters 28 miles off the coast of North
Vietnam, was engaged by three North Vietnamese Navy P4 Motor
Torpedo Boats. The sixty-six-foot-long aluminum-hulled torpedo
boats, each armed with two torpedoes which mounted a 550 lb TNT
warhead, and capable of exceeding 40 knots, approached at high
speeds from several miles away. The commander of the 7th Fleet's
Destroyer Division 192, Captain John J. Herrick, who was aboard the
Maddox in charge of the mission, ordered the ship's captain
(Commander Herbert Ogier) to have gun crews fire upon the torpedo
boats if they came within 10,000 yards. When they did, the American
sailors fired three rounds to warn off the North Vietnamese
boats.
The maximum effective range for the torpedoes on the NVN boats
was 1,000 yards, but the USS Maddox's 5-inch gun's range was
18,000 yards. As the boats pressed home their attack and came
within 5,000 yards, the first torpedo boat attempted to run abeam
of the Maddox for a side shot, while the remaining two boats
continued their stern chase. The two stern boats, fired first, but
due to the Maddox's heavy fire of 5-inch shells, the torpedo
boats had discharged their torpedoes at excessive range, all four
underwater missiles missing their mark. The forward torpedo boat
fired its torpedoes, without effect, but dueled the Maddox's
5-inch and 3-inch guns with its twin 14.5 mm machinegun, achieving
one hit on the destroyer. The ship altered her course to avoid the
torpedoes, which were observed passing on the starboard side. Soon,
four F8 Crusaders from an aircraft carrier in the region, the
USS Ticonderoga, arrived on the scene and attacked the three
torpedo boats. The combination of fire from the Maddox and
the F8s severely damaged all three boats, and forced them to
retreat to the bases from which they came. Several NVN sailors were
wounded, and four were killed. No US sailors were killed or
wounded, and the Maddox did not sustain serious damage; one
of the four Crusaders sustained some 14.5 mm machinegun fire
hits.
On 4 August, another DESOTO patrol off the North Vietnamese
coast was launched by Maddox and the USS C. Turner Joy, in
order to "show the flag" after the first incident. This time their
orders indicated that the ships were to close to no more than 11
miles (18 km) from the coast of North Vietnam. During an evening
and early morning of rough weather and heavy seas, the destroyers
received radar, sonar, and radio signals that they believed
signaled another attack by the North Vietnamese navy. For some two
hours the ships fired on radar targets and maneuvered vigorously
amid electronic and visual reports of enemies. At 0127 Washington
time, Herrick sent a cable in which he admitted that the attack may
never have happened and that there may actually have been no North
Vietnamese craft in the area. Since then, numerous accounts have
supported the theory that there was no attack on 4 August at all,
including North Vietnamese military commander Vo Nguyen Giap, who
in 1995 admitted the 2 August attack but asserted that the 4 August
attack had never occurred.
As a result of his testimony, on August 7, Congress passed a
joint resolution (H.J. RES 1145), titled the Southeast Asia
Resolution, which granted President Johnson the authority to
conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without the benefit
of a declaration of war. The Resolution gave President Johnson
approval "to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed
force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia
Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its
freedom."
The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for
deploying U.S. conventional forces and the commencement of open
warfare against North Vietnam, beginning the War in Vietnam.